Gentrification and gentrifiers are often understood as ‘dirty’ words, ideas discussed at a veiled distance.Gentrifiers, in particular, are usually a ‘they’.

Gentrifier demystifies the idea of gentrification by opening a conversation that links the theoretical and the grassroots, spanning the literature of urban sociology, geography, planning, policy, and more. Along with established research, new analytical tools, and contemporary anecdotes, John Joe Schlichtman, Jason Patch, and Marc Lamont Hill place their personal experiences as urbanists, academics, parents, and spouses at the centre of analysis. They expose raw conversations usually reserved for the privacy of people’s intimate social networks in order to complicate our understanding of the individual decisions behind urban living and the displacement of low-income residents. The authors’ accounts of living in New York City, San Diego, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Providence link economic, political, and sociocultural factors tochallenge the readers’ current understanding of gentrification and their own roles within their neighbourhoods. A foreword by Peter Marcuse opens the volume.

John Joe Schlichtman is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at DePaul University.

Jason Patch is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Roger Williams University.

Marc Lamont Hill is Distinguished Professor of African American Studies at Morehouse College.

Peter Marcuse is a German-American lawyer and Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at Columbia University. Marcuse holds a JD from Yale Law School and a PhD from UC Berkeley in City and Regional Planning.

i. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii. FOREWORD

1. TOOLS 2. DISPATCHES3. INVASIONS4. COLUMBUS5. COLLISIONS

A1. REFERENCESA2. ENDNOTES

"Gentrifier does a masterful job of explaining, unpacking, and grounding the key analytical concepts that underpin debates on gentrification. In clear, readable, and entertaining prose, John Joe Schlichtman, Jason Patch and Marc Lamont Hill make gentrification more tangible and relevant as an important social topic worthy of rigorous and careful understanding."

John L. Jackson, Jr., Richard Perry University Professor and Dean of the School of Social Policy & Practice, University of Pennsylvania

"John Joe Schlichtman, Jason Patch and Marc Lamont Hill clearly engage in the theoretical and policy debates surrounding gentrification while offering very smart analyses of their own narratives. There is a lot out there on gentrification but Gentrifier is most definitely fresh!"

Mary Pattillo, Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, Northwestern University

"Gentrifier is the sort of book that vintage, pre-Kardashian Kanye West might have written had he had a PhD in urban policy, supplying it with an irresistible hook: "We're all gentrifiers, I'm just the first to admit it." Schlichtman, Patch, and Hill help us shelve what we thought we knew about gentrification, and give us instead a brutally honest reckoning with the ills, conveniences and virtues – but especially the consequences on the vulnerable – of gentrification. They ably wrestle with a characteristic facet of modern existence, rescuing the term from automatic demonization while never once letting it off the hook for the damage it can do."

Michael Eric Dyson, Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University and author of 'Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America'

“The co-authors of Gentrifier take a daring tack: Professors all, they break the third wall of social science to admit that their interest is not purely academic.” Gentrifiers themselves, Schlichtman, Patch and Hill “believe that by sharing their experiences, they can help make sociological sense of this fraught topic.”